


The Long Night

by ohmytheon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crossover, Drifting, Fusion, Gen, Kaiju, Pacific Rim - Freeform, i don't know what is even going on here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-21 06:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmytheon/pseuds/ohmytheon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Modern AU - Crossover with Pacific Rim) When the kaiju first attack, people hope that it is a one time thing; when the second and third kaiju attack, they know that the worst is yet to come; and when the Jaeger Academy starts enlisting, people step up to protect those they love and seek revenge. A look into the lives from Cersei and Jaime to Ned and Robert to Oberyn to Stannis and to their children in the later years of the war against the kaiju after their parents begin to fail and what it means to be a jaeger pilot and to drift with another person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Kaiju Attack

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I'm not exactly sure how to post crossovers and whatnot on here (apologies to the people that commented on this to explain how), so this is what I'm doing. This is a crossover between the movie Pacific Rim and ASOIAF. If you haven't seen Pacific Rim, you should go see it! The gist is this: kaiju (giant alien monsters) are rising up from a breach between universes in the Pacific Ocean and the world came together to build jaegers (giant robots) which are piloted by two people that drift (two minds melding together to control the machine) inside of the jaegers in order to fight the kaiju. Yeeeeah...
> 
> This first chapter is about the older generation. There will be either three or four chapters, not sure yet. I've got a timeline set up for this, but here's the gist of it. Basically, the war against the kaiju has been going on a lot longer in this universe than in the movie. The first kaiju attacked when Ned and Robert are 16, Jaime, Cersei, and Stannis being 14. (All of the age differences and such will be relatively the same as they are in the books, so Tyrion is 8 years younger than his siblings and Renly is 13 years younger than Stannis.) The jaeger program began when Ned was around 18, but they didn't actually start enlisting and drifting between copilots until Ned and Robert are 20 (Robb would be 2) and Jaime, Cersei, and Stannis are 18. I think I messed up Oberyn's age, but I have him at 21 I think when the second kaiju attacks and Elia at 22. (They are older than Ned and co.)
> 
> I've done way too much research on this. SO, there is a four year gap between the first kaiju attack and when the Jaeger Academy starts enlisting pilots for co-piloting jaegers instead of two years like in the movie.

 

  
**The Long Night**  
 _part one_

* * *

  
Tyrion is only six years of age when the first kaiju, Trespasser, attacks San Francisco. He sits in front of the television, wide-eyed and in shock, knowing instinctively that this isn't one of the scary monster movies that his big brother Jaime finds so terribly amusing. Clutching his stuffed lion, Lann, as tightly as possible and even holding his hand over the little lion's eyes, Tyrion can't tear his eyes away. It's only when Jaime comes storming into the house that Tyrion jumps and lets out a yelp, thinking that another kaiju had broken into his house.  
  
"Don't watch that," Jaime says, striding over to the television and turning it off.  
  
"I was watching that!" Tyrion tells him, trying to sound angry instead of afraid. (It doesn't work. His voice trembles and he can't look his impossibly strong and brave brother in the eyes.)  
  
Jaime picks him up with ease. Tyrion is six, but small for his age and not like to get much bigger. The doctors… Well, the doctors say a long of things, normally to his father and most certainly not to him, but Tyrion knows more than he lets on. He knows that he's never going to be like the big brother he idolizes or the father that never quite looks at him straight or with love. "You'll have nightmares," is all Jaime says as he carries Tyrion outside onto their porch.  
  
"I won't," Tyrion protests.  
  
"You had nightmares about Lake Placid for a week; you kept saying that there was a crocodile under your bed. We're not even going to talk about Monsters Inc." Jaime looks away, out into their yard where the sun is slowly setting. Here, at their family's mansion called Casterly Rock in the England countryside, everything looks peaceful. Tyrion can hear their sister, Jaime's twin, Cersei, playing in the pool on the side of their house, laughing and shrieking. She doesn't know the news yet, but her laughter will be cut short the moment she hears that monsters are real.  
  
Tyrion bites his lip. Watching the sun set at their house, it's almost like he didn't just witness the beginning of the end of the world on the telly. He can almost forget that there is a monster destroying a city thousands of miles away and killing people in the second it takes him to blink away from the sun.  
  
"Are the monsters going to eat us?" he finally asks.  
  
Jaime scrunches up his face into something that resembles their father's scowl. "I'm not going to let some stupid monster hurt you, Tyrion." He is fourteen, filled with all the bravado and immortality that youth brings, but his confidence puts Tyrion at ease. "We're safe here, with Father. He'll protect us. And when he's not here, I'll protect you and Cersei both. I'll always be here to protect you."  
  
Except he's not. Tyrion knows how fanciful Jaime can be, even if Jaime himself doesn't realize it. He's got all these ideas, these dreams, and he loves every bit of his family so very much. For however little his father and Cersei love him, Jaime loves Tyrion three times as fiercely. Unfortunately, for everyone, Jaime cannot be in two places at once and when he hears the call to join the Jaeger Academy, Jaime does not hesitate to respond.

*  
  
"It'll be fun!" is the main reasoning for enlisting in the Jaeger Academy according to Robert.  
  
Ned gives his best friend a sideways glance, watching as the other boy downs the rest of his beer and then begins to explain just exactly what the Jaeger Academy is, as far he knows so far. Robert has always been pretty wild, filled with hot blood and an unusual need for mayhem, but he's pretty sure that going to war, head-to-head, with the kaiju is just plain insane. It's not going to be like that stupid fight he had with Rhaegar over the honor of Lyanna, back when they had been stupid and what felt like ages ago. This is an actual war.  
  
(He tries not to think about Lyanna. Tries not to remember how it felt when he came out of the shelter and searched and searched, screaming her name until his voice was raw, until he could barely even speak. And then finding her broken body, bloody and bruised, gods… Gods, he never wants to think about that again. He was seventeen then, but he felt like he was a hundred years-old.)  
  
Ever since that first kaiju attack when they were sixteen, Robert has been itching it get into an actual fight with one. It was why they had joined the marines in the first place, wasn't it, not just because both of them hailed from military families. Catelyn called him crazy, was so furious with them when he'd told her that he'd enlisted. Newlyweds at eighteen, straight out of high school, with a baby boy already on the way, and Ned was off joining the marines with his best buddy Robert Baratheon. If the kaiju doesn't kill him once he's the pilot of a jaeger, Catelyn will if he goes along with this.  
  
"It's not about fun," Ned tries to reason. He's the reasonable one of the two anyways.  
  
Robert rolls his eyes. "Then it's about protecting your own."  
  
Ned shakes his head. "Don't."  
  
But Robert leans forward, unrelenting, an intense gleam in his blue eyes. "It's about vengeance, Ned. Those bloody beasts took something away from you – from us – and I'll take whatever I can get from them, as long as it helps me sleep at night. For Lyanna and Brandon, for our parents."  
  
Ned goes home that night with a heavy heart and mind. He tells himself that he won't follow Robert – but he's done that his entire life. Robert is more than just his best friend; he's been Ned's brother since they were five and playing army. When he realizes that he's going to enlist in the Jaeger Academy, he tries to pass the blame off on Robert, even before he tells his wife of his plans, but he can't ever bring himself to give that excuse to her when the time comes. He wants to join this insane program; he wants to avenge the deaths of his family. His father and older brother Brandon both died during the Cabo San Lucas kaiju attack. Their bodies had never been recovered from the wreckage of their shared plane.  
  
"The Pan Pacific Defense Corps is searching for pilots for the jaegers," Ned tells his wife a few nights later, unable to hold his secret in any longer. "I'm signing up with Robert tomorrow."  
  
He can see the fury in Catelyn's eyes – how she wants to slap him and hug him at the same time. Her uncle, Brynden Tully, was one of the first pilots of the Mark-I prototypes and risks his life constantly. She doesn't want to fear for the life of someone else she loves, even if Ned is already serving in the Marines. "I lost Brandon to the kaiju," she says instead, in a quiet voice. "Do you truly think this is the best idea?"  
  
Sometimes, he forgets that Catelyn had been dating his older brother at the time of his death. He selfishly thinks that he's the only one to have suffered when he should know better. "I have to do this," Ned insists. "What kind of father would I be if I did not try to protect my children to the fullest?" He casts a glance into the other room where their son Robb is playing with toys. In the years to come, he will be playing with stuffed kaiju and plastic jaegers, pretending to be the co-pilot of a jaeger just like his father, alongside his father, hanging in the drift with his heroic father. For now though, he is two years-old and content with innocent toys. Their daughter Sansa is just a few months old, sleeping in her crib upstairs. She's so beautiful and he worries with every morning that she will not live in a world with hope if all of this continues. "I don't want my children to grow up in a world where they have to fear a kaiju attack at any second."  
  
And that is all he can really say. He sighs, runs his fingers through his brown hair, and looks her in the eyes. She doesn't look away. She has never been the type of woman to back down and he loves her for that. Finally, for what feels like forever, she takes in a deep breath and then reaches up to touch his face, her fingers raking through the beard he'll have to shave tomorrow. "Do what you have to do," she states. "Be the hero we all know you are."  
  
Ned is twenty years-old – he's only twenty – but as he signs his name for the Academy, Robert nudging him excitedly in the ribs, Ned feels like he's lived a thousand lives and hopes that what he's doing will at least give his children one great life to live.

*  
  
Contrary to what people think, it is Cersei's idea to enlist for the Jaeger Academy, not Jaime's. The second she heard about the jaeger program, she knew that was what she wanted to do. The only problem was that her father said no. Tywin Lannister was not a man to ignore. As one of the first Mark-I pilots, alongside Brynden Tully, Tywin was a decorated officer and a man to be feared and listened to. She has listened to him her entire life, doing her best to emulate him; and so when her father becomes a jaeger pilot, it is the only thing she plans on doing with her life.  
  
"War is not meant for women," her father tells her on hers and Jaime's sixteenth birthday, seventeenth birthday, eighteenth birthday. And she listens, anger blossoming inside of her, because one does not ignore Tywin's rules.  
  
Instead Tywin puts the pressure on Jaime to train as hard as he can for when the time comes. Jaime is willing to work, but only because he has always listened to their father without a single complaint. So has Cersei, and so it frustrates her when she watches Tywin teach Jaime a fighting technique. She forces every bit of knowledge out of Jaime later, prying it out of him without any care for delicacy. She'd watch as their father pushed Jaime to his very physical and mental limits and watch as Jaime crawled into bed, exhausted and muttering under his breath that he was going to quit – and then she would sneak into his room, crawl into his bed, and poke him until he woke up, whispering demands that he tell her everything their father told him.  
  
"I should know everything you know," she always claims. "We're twins, mirror images."  
  
Jaime always relents, always, most likely because he can't imagine doing anything as dangerous and ridiculous as this without her, his other half.  
  
When they are nineteen and Tywin comes home to tell them that the PPDC were actually hiring pilots – not single pilots, but copilots for each jaeger – Cersei stands up and proclaims, "Jaime and I are enlisting."  
  
The first thing her father says is, "No, only Jaime is. You will stay here and watch Tyrion until we move into the Shatterdome."  
  
Cersei snarls back in return though. "No, I will not – not unless you want Jaime to fail." She never looks away from him, never backs down, even as her father stares her down. Jaime has not gotten up from his spot on the couch; in fact, he isn't even looking at either of them. Instead, he focuses all of his attention on the telly, where Brynden Tully is being interviewed about the Jaeger Academy by CNN. Even eleven year-old Tyrion is staring at them; and he normally avoids their father's presence at all costs. Cersei tosses her brilliant blonde hair out of her face. "I'm the only one Jaime could be drift compatible with and you know it. Our bond is stronger than most. He would fail without me at his side. He wouldn't be able to drift with anyone else and he would flop out of the Academy."  
  
Tywin says nothing after that. He looks at his daughter for the longest time, her chest rising and falling, her cheeks red, her green eyes bright with excitement – and then he takes one look at his son, Jaime, the golden boy, and walks upstairs to his study, grabbing a hold of Tyrion and pulling his youngest son out of the room. He doesn't offer his approval or his congratulations for standing up for what she believes; he doesn't tell her that he's proud of her decision or admires her bravery. That frustrates her as well, but she's so elated over her victory that she pushes those feelings aside.  
  
It's only when she looks back at her twin, shooting a little "yes!" into the air, that she feels something unsettling in his gut.  
  
For however much he hates being a part from her, Jaime does not look too thrilled with the prospect of Cersei joining him in a jaeger suit. She tiptoes over to him and then carefully crawls into his lap, taking his face in her hands. They look so much alike that it's startling. When they had been children, it had been hard to tell them apart from each other and she had enjoyed pretending to be her twin brother. Now, at nineteen, she had a woman's body and it was so much easier to tell who was who. Once in a suit though, inside the head of a jaeger, nobody would ever know the difference again.  
  
"We were meant for this program," she tells him, delicately kissing him on the cheek and squeezing him against her. "We were meant to do this together. It is made for us; I can feel it."

*  
  
Most people have never seen a kaiju in real life – and the ones that do always regret it. They either die or sometimes wish they were dead. Oberyn is none of the above. He is twenty-one when the second kaiju crawls out of the breach and attacks Manila. His family is vacationing there in one of their many "summer" homes. Where he comes from, it is always summer, but they always make a joke about it, especially since they almost always go on these vacations during the winter months. Still, it is always nice going to the Philippines to visit their mother's family, even more so during these dire times. He likes seeing his family, knowing they are all safe, and keeping a close eye on them.  
  
It's just so ironic and spiteful that a kaiju rises from the ocean on their last day in Manila.  
  
Everyone is running down the streets, screaming and panicking, poor and rich alike. No one is safe. Most safe zones or decent shelters haven't been built yet. This is just the second attack and people thought that maybe the first one in San Francisco, California will be the last and only one. Now they know – now Oberyn knows – that this will not stop at just one kaiju.  
  
Doran is busy trying to tear their mother away from her prized possessions, but their house is too close to the water. It's too dangerous to stay there. She is stubborn, as she has always been, but Doran coaxes her carefully and she begrudgingly listens to him. Maybe it's his calm voice or maybe it's the fear in his dark eyes – either way, it is not soon enough. Oberyn is standing still as he watches the kaiju rise out of the ocean, ferocious and wild, the most horrifying and powerful thing he has ever seen in his life. He is struck by the sheer power of the beast, almost lulled by its booming roar.  
  
"Oberyn!" The scream of his sister, Elia, is enough to tear Oberyn out of his thoughts and he runs to catch up with his family, ruthlessly pushing his way through the crowd until he can grasp his sister's little hand and pull her towards safety.  
  
Everyone is shouting and crying and screaming, but he can't hear any of it over the crashing of the kaiju behind them. Buildings fall with every step and cars are crushed – and people are silenced in a matter of seconds. His eyes dart at every angle, trying to keep track of all his family members. He sees Doran holding onto their mother; their father leading the group and shouting at them to hurry; and Elia–  
  
His sister stumbles behind him and falls to the ground, her hand slipping out of his.  
  
"Elia!" Oberyn screams. He sees the look of panic on her face and then she is swallowed by the crowd of running people. It takes everything in him to not get carried away by the mob, but he pushes against the stream, screaming her name over and over again. Finally, he climbs onto a barrel so that he can stand above everyone and get a better look. The barrel shakes every time the kaiju takes a step closer, but Oberyn keeps his balance easily, keeping his cool despite his racing heart.  
  
His intense gaze turns up and he focuses on the kaiju. It's tall – taller than anything he could imagine. His brain knows that it's only as tall as most buildings in big cities, but a part of him keeps thinking that it's the most massive thing he's ever seen. Its limbs are long and seemingly sharp bones practically protrude out of the skin with every step it takes. When it opens its mouth to roar, florescent blue shines through the smoke and fire. If it hadn't been destroying a city he loved and murdering innocent people, he would have almost had a mind to call it strangely beautiful.  
  
But it is too close, far too close. If he doesn't run now, he'll be crushed or eaten or some other horrifying thing, but he can't leave his sister. He can't leave the girl he loves the most in the world.  
  
"Oberyn!" A scream rips through the air. He looks frantically through the crowd until he spots Elia lying on the ground, curled up, with her hands over her head. When he goes to jump off the barrel towards her, she looks up and connect eyes with him – and then she shakes her head. "Oberyn, run! Get out of here!"  
  
He knows what she's telling him to do – can see the strong, determined, yet terrified look in her eyes. She means for him to run away and leave her behind. He can't possibly do that though. He shakes his head and jumps back into the crowd, pushing his way towards her, trying to ignore her furious shriek. But rubble is falling all around him, injuring people, and there is smoke and he can't see, all he can here is screaming but it's the kaiju's now, mixed alongside his own. Oberyn catches a glimpse of his sister's dark hair and her brown eyes and then a slab of concrete comes crashing down between them.  
  
Oberyn should have died right then and there, but the next thing he knows, there are strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him back into an alley. He fights with the arms, shouting Elia's name, but in the end he finds himself huddling in a corner with a group of children. When he swings his head around, he sees his older brother Doran huffing, sweat dripping down his dirty face. Oberyn is blind with rage at his brother for tearing him away from their sister, from not letting him save her, so much so that he doesn't see Doran's broken leg or anything else. He sits and waits, staring out into the smoke, thinking of that kaiju and his sister, long after the kaiju has been taken down.  
  
Never once in his life does Oberyn wish for death, though plenty of people believe that he does, what with the way he travels all around the world in an attempt to join every battle against the kaiju. It's only natural for him to be the first one to step up to the plate when the PPDC first starts testing the jaeger program.  
  
 _For Elia,_ he thinks every time he steps into the room to begin testing. It's a dangerous way to live, bringing the pure anger and memories of his family while in the drift, but he couldn't stop them even if he tried.

*  
  
Stannis wants to be a jaeger pilot. It has nothing to do with the fact that Robert and his best friend Ned have enlisted, though most people would say that it is. Instead, it has everything to do with the fact that Stannis thinks it's more than right to join the jaeger program. He doesn't want to just sit at home in their cozy Martha's Vineyard home and watch on the news about his brother's great victory.  
  
Nonetheless, when Robert comes back to visit after his first clash with a kaiju in Vancouver, the oldest Baratheon brother makes it very clear what he expects Stannis to do: "I need you to stay and watch Renly, protect him, keep him safe and happy. Can you do that, Stannis?"  
  
Of course he stays; of course he watches Renly; of course he tells Robert yes and nods his head, however begrudgingly. Robert is the oldest. Their parents are dead, killed in a boating accident that had nothing to do with kaijus and everything to do with just simple terrible weather. If Stannis were to leave, then who would Renly be left with: the family lawyer, Cressen, their old legal guardian before Robert and then Stannis turned of age?  
  
So Stannis stays put, working in their family business during the day, and then watching Renly at night. Selsye comes over every now and then, but he still doesn't like the idea of her staying the night, not until their married. He keeps putting off the idea of marriage though, saying that the time isn't right. Who wants to get married when there are monsters crawling out of the ocean through an interdimensional portal? Besides, he's only nineteen. That's way too early to get married. For the most part though, it's just him and Renly.  
  
Tonight is another one of those nights. Selyse came over and cooked them dinner, but then left, saying that she had to go to church. She still tried to convince him to join her, but the idea of going to church and praying to any sort of god didn't appeal to him. What kind of god would allow something like this to happen? Besides – and he hates thinking it, if only because it makes him feel guilty towards Selyse – the Church of R'hllor reminds him of some sort of cult, like one of those Kaiju Churches that pop up here and there.  
  
Stannis sits down on the couch in the living room. Renly is sitting on the floor, having a mock battle between a stuffed kaiju and a toy version of Robert's jaeger, _Winter Fury_. The jaeger is a mixture between yellow and black on top of the grey mental, a bulky machine that is able to produce a hammer of sorts with its hand if need be. Renly is all about these toys and watches every show about them. To him, jaeger pilots are the coolest people in the world, like rockstars. Stannis knows they are just men in machines though and men could die easier than any kaiju. That doesn't stop him from wanting to be a pilot though.  
  
Pulling his cell out of his pocket, Stannis dials up the only person he can think of, not wanting to watch the silly jaeger vs. kaiju show that Renly has playing on the TV. "What are you doing, Davos?"  
  
"Just cleaning up dinner," his best friend responds. Unlike Stannis, Davos was quick to settle down with his high school sweetheart and begin a family. He already had a son on the way. "What's up?"  
  
Stannis hesitates, already thinking that he should hang up and forget what he's been thinking, but he can't get the thought out of his head. "We should enlist for the PPDC."  
  
"Marya would kill me," Davos says, which isn't a no, but it isn't a yes either. He sighs on the other line. "We've talked about this. I thought Robert told you to stay put and help raise Renly."  
  
"That's a waste and you know it," Stannis replied fiercely. "We could do it. We could pilot our own jaeger. They need more pilots. Three-fourths of their recruits are mediocre at best. And how can I protect Renly by just sitting at home and doing nothing? If a kaiju comes crashing into the yard, I'm not going to be able to hold it off with a shotgun."  
  
Davos is silent on the other end for a long time. He's thought about enlisting as well, to protect his family, but it would be difficult. First of all, he actually has a juvenile record for stealing and the government will not look too fondly on that. Second, he actually has a family. Stannis has his brothers, but even that is a stretch. He loves Renly (and he loves Robert if he thinks about it long enough), but he knows that piloting a jaeger is what he is meant to do, what is right, what is for the greater good. Protect the many over the few. How could he protect Renly by doing nothing?  
  
"I know I'm meant to pilot a jaeger," Stannis says. "I have to. It's all I can think about."  
  
He looks at Renly, who throws the stuffed kaiju across the room and laughs. Renly will understand – and he'll be proud of him too. All he does is talk about Robert, who is never home and has only seen him a handful of times since his birth. When Stannis becomes a jaeger pilot, Renly will look up to him as well.

 


	2. Winning the War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has been over fourteen years since the kaiju first came and the Rangers are fighting as hard as they can in their jaegers. However, they're beginning to notice that this war is affecting their children as well...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this was supposed to be a much sadder chapter (okay, it still is), but then I realized that I wanted to talk about how the war is actually going for the first generation, back when things seemed almost good and somewhat promising. The years vary, as not every snippet is set in the same year, but it's been between fourteen-eighteen years since the first kaiju attack, depending on the snippet.

 

  
**The Long Night**   
_part two_

* * *

The war goes on for longer than anyone could have anticipated. Surely the kaiju did not expect for it to go on for so long, but humans are resilient and stubborn and, when it comes down to the world as we know it ending or coming together to fight to survive, they put aside their differences and petty wars. Because a war against each other has nothing on a war against the kaiju.

Nonetheless, that doesn’t keep Catelyn’s heart from racing every time she hears about another kaiju attack on the television. Here in Alaska, her family is not too far from where an attack could happen, but they’re far enough inland to be relatively safe. The kaiju always come from the ocean; and despite attempts to wipe out the human population, they never get too far from the ocean either. It’s a terrible thought, but she can’t help feeling relieved that she does not live too close to the sea.

“Mom! Mom!”

Catelyn steps out of her bedroom and walks to the stairs. There is her oldest, Robb, barreling into the house, not caring that he is tracking in all sorts of snow that he’ll have to wipe up later. He jerks his hat off and there is a wild look in his bright blue eyes that Catelyn recognizes almost instantaneously. She has already steeled herself for the news by the time Robb exclaims, “There’s a spike in the breach – another kaiju, codename Yamarashi.”

“Where?” she asks, but she doesn’t have to ask. She knows, gods, she knows.

“San Diego.” Robb looks fierce. He is twelve, but has been talking about enlisting in the Jaeger Academy just like his father since he was four. It is all he can remember dreaming about. And even though he is still just a child, he is so terribly brave. He has done so much to help her since Ned isn’t around for long, so much that Robb barely seems like a boy anymore. But she can tell he is afraid from the way his entire body is trembling, the way he clenches his hands at his side. “Dad’s been deployed.”

Catelyn nods her head, presses her lips together, and says nothing. Robb gives her one more look before leaving the room to go look after his siblings. She hears Robb tell them the news in a quiet voice, not really able to make out his words. Sansa cries out, so worried and scared for her father, but she will handle it bravely. To her, Ned is like a knight in all the stories she’s read; her father will surely slay this dragon, as he has done all the rest. Arya is different. She lets out a howl and immediately rushes into her bedroom, slamming the door shut. Much like Robb, she has dreams of being a jaeger pilot and it burns her to hear about her father going on these missions while being cooped up in their cozy home. Bran handles the news the best. Catelyn does not have to be in the same room to picture her son nodding his head quietly or see him rushing to the closest television so he can watch the news of the battle live.

She knows that she should be with her children right now, holding them against her, telling them that it will be alright, but selfishly, she needs a moment to herself. She walks back into her bedroom, shuts the door, and carefully sits down at the foot of the bed, holding her very much swollen belly. As she turns on the television and finds the proper channel, she never takes her other hand off of her stomach. She’s due in a matter of weeks to have hers and Ned’s third son. It comforts her just a little to feel a life they created together while she watches the kaiju crash through San Diego. When _Winter Fury_ shows up, her heart jumps and she gasps.

The moment the jaeger – her husband’s and Robert Baratheon’s jaeger – connects its first punch against the kaiju’s jaw, Catelyn feels a kick from the inside of her belly. She looks down, tears pricking at her eyes, and hopes to any god out there that that is a sign.

*

“It’s a Category IV, my friend! Category IV! Can you believe it?”

Willas Tyrell glances up from the novel he’d been reading and watches his copilot frantically pull his clothes on. The man has a stubborn habit of only wearing his boxers in their quarters and, if it wasn’t for Willas, he would have done so throughout the whole Shatterdome. Instead, the hot-blooded copilot walks everywhere in pants, rarely bothering with a shirt or even shoes. Then again, Willas supposed that if he was as handsome as Oberyn Martell, he would forgo clothes as well.

“This is going to change everything,” Oberyn says as he pulls a shirt over his head.

“That’s what they’ve been saying since the first kaiju showed up twelve years ago,” Willas points out as he pulls himself to his feet and grabs his jacket, sliding into it gracefully, “but everything feels the same these days.”

Oberyn smirks. He’s always so excited about being deployed; and Willas isn’t sure if it’s because they will be protecting people or Oberyn is able to get his anger out only when strapped into a jaeger. “This one will be different; I can tell.” He claps Willas on the shoulder. “Now come, we must hurry. Who knows what kind of havoc a category IV kaiju can wreak.”

It turns out, upon arrival to the brig, that things will be different this time around. Willas watches the screen where Tywin Lannister is speaking to them. Even a man as great as Tywin cannot be at every Shatterdome at once, but they always take orders from him. He’s a constant for every jaeger pilot to look to, the man that began it all. Tywin Lannister is the first Mark-I pilot to survive and also one of the first to drift with another jaeger pilot, alongside his brother Kevan. Every man and woman in the Jaeger Academy, past and present, looks up to the man.

Except for Oberyn, who is too antsy with the anticipation of the battle to truly pay attention.

Willas gives his partner a short glance, too used to his behavior, before looking back to the Marshal. It doesn’t matter if Oberyn doesn’t pay attention, as long as Willas does, since they’ll be in each other’s heads and know everything the other does in minutes.

“A three jaeger team!” Oberyn exclaims as they’re getting suited up. “We’ve never done this before, but I suppose we’ve never had a category IV either. I don’t think it’s necessary though. We could handle this beast on our own.”

“Don’t get cocky,” Willas reminds his partner.

Arrogance is always like to get someone killed. There isn’t a single good thing about it. He knows that from past experience. When he was young, he was something of a daredevil; and with a friend like Oberyn Martell, it wasn’t hard to push yourself. It had been his own stupidity that had caused him to wreck his motorcycle and severely damage his leg, but his family still liked to blame Oberyn for it. The jaeger program, however, gave Willas a second chance at everything. Somehow, it makes him feel whole again. Whenever he drifts with Oberyn, he feels like he has a whole body with the jaeger and the prosthetic doesn’t matter.

Oberyn just smirks again though. “Do I ever?”

“Always, brother, always.” Willas flips a few switches, the weight of the neural handshake beginning to get to him. Those few minutes before the handshake always feel like just before you jump off a diving board into cold water.

“What two other teams are we pairing up with?”

“ _Casterly Rock_ and _Dragonstone_.” Willas has done his best to memorize every single jaeger all over the world and the people that pilot them. Jaeger pilots are a part of an elite crew. You have to be in order to drift and fight inside a machine like a jaeger.  Oberyn, on the other hand, memorizes all of the kaiju and their strengths and weaknesses. Together, they have always made a good, however unlikely, team. “ _Dragonstone_ is piloted by Stannis Baratheon and Davos Seaworth, _Casterly Rock_ by–”

“Jaime and Cersei Lannister, the Marshal’s own progeny, I know.” Oberyn looks over to him and Willas cannot help but wear a surprised yet impressed expression. “I do pay attention to some things. What kind of jaeger pilot would I be if I did not know some of the history behind our great leader? Besides, their names are tossed around everywhere. They’re _famous_.”

“Yes, well, the kaiju don’t care about fame,” Willas says as they are warned about the neural handshake.

Oberyn looks straight ahead, his mind already on the prize though it is not before them yet. “Neither do I.”

*

 _They’re just children,_ Ned can’t help but think as he watches his daughter Arya and son Bran play at the feet of _Winter Fury_. It’s becoming more and more difficult to find joy in any place, but even more so in a place like the Los Angeles Shatterdome. His children’s laughter rings in the large room though, making other workers smile as they pass by. Arya pushes Bran’s wheelchair as fast as possible and then jumps onto the back, holding herself up as they slide across the room. They’d both climb up the jaeger’s legs if they could, but it’s not allowed and impossible for Bran besides.  He loved climbing before his fall.

Ned blinks the thoughts away. People forget that there are simple dangers out there – that you could get hit by a car or have a heart attack or fall out of a tree just as easily as you could get killed by a kaiju.

He walks over to them. The moment his children spot him, they both instantly shout, “Father!” Arya runs full speed, her shoes slapping loudly against the floor, Bran rolling behind her. It’s been two years since his fall, but he’s grown used to his wheelchair, despite only being eight. Stooping down to one knee, he hugs them both.

Bran pulls back first. “When are Mother, Sansa, and Rickon coming to stay here?”

“I’m not sure,” is all Ned can say. He and Catelyn decided early on that she would stay at their home in Alaska with the children while Ned spent most of his early years traveling to and from Shatterdomes all over the United States and back home. He hates being a part from her for so long, is desperate to spend every night in bed with her in his arms, but both of them know it is for the best. Their family is safer there. Still, ever since Robb had joined the Jaeger Academy when he turned fifteen, they also decided that it was time to be together again. Arya, Bran, and Robb came to the Los Angeles Shatterdome first when Robb enlisted for the Academy, leaving Catelyn, Sansa, and Rickon still up North.

“I want to enlist in the Jaeger Academy,” Arya tells him.

Ned shakes his head. “Arya, you are too young still. You know that the youngest age the Academy takes is fifteen.”

“I don’t want to wait five years,” Arya argues, looking both distraught and frustrated. “I _can’t_ wait that long.”

“There are other things you could do,” Ned insists. While he is more than pleased with his decision to become a jaeger pilot, other than the distance it has put between him and his family, he hates the idea of all of his children following him in his footsteps. He knows it is impossible as well. Not everyone that enlists in the Jaeger Academy actually finishes. The ability to drift someone is wholly unique. A person could be the top of their class and beat every record, but if they weren’t able to find someone they were drift compatible with, everything fell apart. Arya is a untamed spirit, much like his sister Lyanna was, and Ned often thinks that there is no one in the world she could be drift compatible with, not even her sister or her brothers. “Just because the world is at war with the kaiju does not mean that _your_ world must revolve around the kaiju.”

Arya takes a step back from him, a determined look on her face but hurt flashing in her eyes. “I’m going to pilot a jaeger, Father, just like you and like Robb when he graduates.”

“It’s not just about you, Arya,” Ned tries to tell her. “There is the drift–”

“I don’t care!” his daughter shouts before she turns on her heels and storms out of the bay. The metal doors shut behind her. He knows where she’ll go though; she’ll hide up on one of the bridges and watch the engineers and mechanics work on _Winter Fury_ ’s heart. It’s her favorite place in the Dome.

Ned sighs and rubs his face. When he looks up, he sees that Bran is still there, a sad but accepting look on his face. It’s much too mature for someone his age, but he’s been like this for two years. “I wanted to be a jaeger pilot, too, before…” He shrugs his shoulders. “But there are other things I can do, right, Father?”

“Of course, Bran,” Ned says, pulling his second son into another hug. “There are so many other things you can do. Don’t let this life trap you.”

*

Words are whispered behind their backs, things that people should never say or hear, but Cersei cares little for them. Instead, she turns her nose up at every rumor that finally slithers their way into her ears and she smiles dismissively at them. What do these people know of her and her brother? They know nothing. Being drift compatible with someone is on a whole new level that few people outside of the PPDC (and some inside of it) are capable of understanding. Still, one can’t help but be slightly disconcerted by the relationship between the pilots of _Casterly Rock_.

For many pilots, drift capability becomes a symbol of loving one another. More than a few pilots were found to be romantically involved with one another or married each other after a year or so of drifting together. Cersei and Jaime are something altogether different though. She knows that they could never drift with anyone else but each other – can feel it in her bones. His memories are her memories are his memories and when they are in the drift together a thousand thoughts and feelings explode inside her chest. She isn’t who she is supposed to be until she is in the drift with Jaime.

Which is why it was so surprising when she married Robert Baratheon thirteen years ago.

Oh, most certainly, their marriage is an unconventional union. For one, they could never drift together. Cersei doesn’t kid herself or anyone else whenever her and Robert’s drift compatibility is brought up. The last time it was asked, she laughed in the man’s face. _“Drift with someone besides Jaime? Do you want to render the most capable jaeger piloting team impotent?”_

So when her daughter, Myrcella, asks, “Why did you marry Father?” Cersei has to take a step back to examine the decade long decision.

Truth be told, she rarely sees Robert these days and their relationship isn’t a marriage so much as…well, a convenience. Appearances are important, after all, especially to someone as famous and well-known as Cersei Lannister. Jaeger pilots are almost like gods among the common people, the only things that stand between them and the hideous kaiju. She can’t go out in public without getting recognized, both for her prowess in a jaeger and her beauty. And while she cares little for what people said, her father Tywin made a stand a long, long time ago that any slights against him or their family name would not be tolerated. Image is and always would be important.

“He is a brilliant jaeger pilot,” Cersei finally settles on. “I admired and respected that about him. He and his copilot were the first to pilot Mark-II’s. And he…has a way with words. Everyone loves him. The people love him. Everyone in the program and the Academy loves him.”

“Do you love him?” Myrcella asks, and it takes Cersei aback for a second. Her only daughter has never questioned her before, has never demanded such straightforward answers that Cersei normally refuses to give. It is her oldest, Joffrey, that is always the one pushing her to her limits. Now that he is in the Jaeger Academy though, training to be a jaeger pilot (something she feels in her heart that he will never be capable of accomplishing but refuses to say out loud), it is young Myrcella asking the questions.

“Why are you asking all of these things anyways?” Cersei demands, turning away from her daughter and straightening her bed. She has a large room to herself, a bed big enough to fit two for whenever Robert visits, if he ever visits. Jaime’s room is directly across the hall from hers, but he’s very rarely in it. “You should be finishing your studies with Tommen.”

Myrcella fiddles with her fingers and looks down at her feet. “I just… I was just curious… You don’t talk about Father much and he rarely comes to see us and when he does you look really grumpy…”

“Of course I love your father,” Cersei snaps, not meaning to be mean but unable to stop herself. Before she can turn around to look at her daughter, the girl has rushed out of the room. Practically growling in frustration, Cersei slams her door shut and collapses back onto her bed. A small part of her prays for a kaiju attack so that she can drift with Jaime. That always makes her feel better. Thoughts of her twin brother rush into her mind. She pictures him practicing in the Kwoon Combat Room. It’s his favorite place in the entire Shatterdome while hers has always been the solitude of her quarters, outside of their jaeger _Casterly Rock_ itself.

*

Tyrion will never be a jaeger pilot, never be a ranger, never be anything like anyone in his family – and so he immerses himself in books and papers and every bit of research he can get his hands on. He has read everything from the first paper published on the kaiju thirteen years ago, horrifically outdated as the information is. To be honest though, now that he’s finishing graduate school and damn near seventeen years since the first kaiju crawled out of the breach, the data on the kaiju hasn’t changed all that much. No one really knows what the hell the kaiju are or what they truly want, if they want anything or if they are just acting on animalistic urges. The data varies too wildly, but it interests him nonetheless.

Knowing everything there is to know about kaiju still isn’t enough to earn his father’s approval though, but it’s enough for Tyrion to be allowed into the Jaeger Academy under the pretense of being in the Research Division.

“If I could just get a hold of an actual kaiju brain…” Tyrion says, trying to work up the courage to actually pitch this insane idea that he’s had bouncing around in his head for the past few weeks.

“What do you need a kaiju brain for?” Tywin Lannister asks, not even bothering to look back at him. He’s pouring over the world map again, like he always does in his spare time. As far as Tyrion can remember, this map has haunted his father, always hanging behind him. With each new kaiju attack, another marker on the map is placed where it occurred. After seventeen years of kaiju attacks, it is even more disheartening than ever before.

Still, Tyrion pushes forward. “We need to understand these creatures more. They’ve been attacking us for nearly two decades; and we still have no idea what their endgame is for us. Is there an endgame or are they just trying to destroy us all because they hate us?”

“They’re monsters, Tyrion,” Tywin snorts derisively. “They are incapable of feeling emotions, even hate. You should know that.”

Tyrion ignores the implication altogether. “Should I? Do we know that, _truly_?” He does his best to word everything he says with as much care as possible. One wrong word will cause his father to throw him out of the room. It has happened on more than one occasion – well, more often than not, to be honest. This is something that Tyrion is passionate about. He’s studied the kaiju for as long as he can remember with as much enthusiasm, respect, and fear as he could muster. “What do we know of the kaiju? We don’t even know where they come from.”

“They come from the Breach.”

“But what’s beyond the Breach? Surely they have a universe of their own. So why are they coming to ours?”

“To destroy, conquer, kill. Why does a lion hunt down a stag?” Tywin finally looks at his youngest son. The look in his green eyes is enough to make anyone falter, but Tyrion holds his ground strong. “They’re monsters, aliens, animals – whatever you want to call them. They don’t need reasons to do what they are doing. We are the superior beings.”

“How do you know that though?” Tyrion exclaims, his frustration bleeding through. “For all we know, the kaiju could be superior intelligent beings that have come to colonize our universe as their own. Maybe they are trying to communicate with us, but don’t know how. Perhaps they come from a species that travels great lengths to lay their eggs or give birth to their offspring, but instead of upstream like a salmon or on the other side of the ocean, they have to travel to a whole new universe because of their size. The point is, _we don’t know_. And having an actual, intact brain to examine and look at might be our best chance.”

“I don’t need to understand what they want in order to kill them,” Tywin states. “I just need to know the best way to kill them.”

Tyrion throws his hands up in the air. “Is that all you can think of to do? Kill first and ask questions _never_?”

“Is that what you not did to your mother?”

The question hangs in the air, silencing Tyrion completely. He stares at his father, wounded more than anything. It has been twenty-three years, but the truth is that his father will never forgive him for what he did to his mother. _It wasn’t my fault,_ Tyrion thinks weakly, desperately, remembering all the times Jaime told him so and even his therapist told him so. Shae was always adamant that his mother’s death had not been Tyrion’s fault, but it is so painfully difficult to accept that when his father pours every ounce of hate and blame he can onto his youngest son.

“Just…just think about it, will you, Marshal?” Tyrion says in a much more docile tone.

“I’ll consider it.” But it is clear as day to Tyrion that his father has already shelved the idea. Had it come from anyone else, Tywin might have considered it, but it appears as if his hatred towards his son equals his hatred toward the kaiju. They are both monsters anyways, in Tywin’s eyes. “You are dismissed. Now, find Jaime and send it to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Tyrion replies and he shuttles out of the room, his mind swirling and his gut clenching. They need to understand the kaiju. It is the only way they are going to get the upper hand in this war. Couldn’t his father see that?

*

“Your left!” Stannis shouts.

 _I know, I know,_ Davos can’t help but think, because if Stannis knows, then he knows already. He doesn’t even think about pulling his left arm into a tight uppercut. By the time the thought crosses his mind, it is already happening and their jaeger’s heavy metal fist connects into the kaiju’s jaw. That’s what he truly loves about being a Ranger, a jaeger pilot – he’s at one with the machine. The jaeger is his body. When he moves, it moves. When he thinks, Stannis thinks.

It’s a fucking miracle, is what it is, despite the “magic” or “god” mumbo-jumbo that Mel keeps spouting about it. A jaeger isn’t magic; it is a man-made machine that he and Stannis can move on their own. It’s science, whatever crazy science it is, not magic or god’s doing. Back when he’d been his sons’ age, he would have said that a jaeger was just science fiction. No way could it actually happen.

But it did – and Davos Seaworth, just some poor kid from a poor family that grew up in a poor house is copiloting a giant robot and fighting against a giant alien monster in the Pacific Ocean. How crazy is that?

“The boat–” Stannis starts.

“Got it.” Davos reaches down and picks up the little boat that is floating between them and the kaiju. Once they get into the thick of it, that boat is going to be toast, unless they get it out of the way. Stannis reaches for the throat of the kaiju with their right arm as Davos drops the boat back into the ocean and pushes it as gently as he can away from them. _Sail away, come sail away_ , he can’t help but think.

“Now is not the time for singing!” Stannis snaps, not meanly.

Davos doesn’t have to shoot Stannis a sheepish look for Stannis to know what he wants to get across. That’s another thing he loves about being a jaeger pilot – the drifting is so fantastic. Words don’t have to be said; body language doesn’t even matter. Two minds melding together…When he and Stannis had finished the Academy together and found that they were, yes, drift compatible like they’d thought they could be, it had been great. Some people had to sit back and wait until they finally found someone to drift with. They had been lucky.

“Fire!” Davos announces, leaning forward to push the button. The left hand of _Dragonstone_ turns into their special weapon, basically a blowtorch that is so searing hot that it can cut right through the flesh of the kaiju. Both Davos and Stannis scream as one as they push forward, shoving their fiery hand into the gut of the kaiju and turning up the heat as high as possible. The monster screams and flails, but cannot escape as they have it by the throat with their free hand. The best part about this weapon is that it sometimes lessens the amount of the toxic blue blood that seeps out of the beasts.

It’s strange how he can almost feel the life of the kaiju drain out of it, despite not being connected to it. But when the kaiju stops roaring and falls limp, they both know to let go of it and watch as the kaiju drops into the ocean, dead as a doornail. Davos feels a sense of pride swelling upside of himself and a sense of frustration building in Stannis. With every kaiju they kill, Stannis seems more and more perturbed.

“Eight years,” Stannis mutters once they are back at the Sydney Shatterdome and being unhooked from _Dragonstone_ and each other. Davos feels the sharp loss of the drift, as he always has since they first starting drifting. It feels like something is being plucked right out of his brain. “Eight years we’ve been defending this place, practically on our own, and nothing has changed.”

“We’re older now,” Davos points out as they walk out of the head of their jaeger, “wiser.”

“Just older,” Stannis grumbles.

And he’s not wrong. Davos can feel the toll that being a ranger has taken on him. He’s not as young as he used to be. When he joined the Academy, he had been twenty; he graduated at twenty-two. Now he is thirty-one and he went to bed feel a little sorer each night. As he lay down that night, he could not help but think of his sons. Matthos already talks about being a ranger like his father, a few of the others as well. Marya sent him a picture of Devan playing with a toy version of _Dragonstone_ , a big grin on his face. That’s all he ever wants the jaegers and kaiju to be to his children by the time they are his age – toys from their childhood.

 

 

 


	3. Fight the Good Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war with the kaiju has dragged on. Rangers are like gods - but anyone can fall, as they find out the hard way. The war is not going well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, it's been like...forever since the war started. I'm losing track of the timeline, but I've stopped caring as much. Sorry. I'll get back in it though. Just know that Robb is in his twenties if that helps any, so I know that it's been a good solid twenty-five years since the first kaiju came about. Maybe longer. But at least twenty-five.

_Anyone can fall._

That’s what rangers don’t talk about whenever they step into the head of a jaeger and get ready to engage a kaiju. It’s what they don’t talk about during training; when they’re dueling someone in the Kwoon Combat Room to improve their fighting techniques; when they lie in bed at night with their significant other wide awake and unable to sleep because the drifting experience seven hours ago still lies heavy on their conscience.

No one likes to talk about it, but it’s true. Anyone and any jaeger can fall.

They think of themselves as untouchable, as rock stars, as demi-gods. When people look at a man like the Marshall, Tywin Lannister, standing perfectly still in his pressed military uniform, it’s easy to forget that he’s not a god, just a man.

But anyone can fall – and fall they will.

*

Cersei is all smiles for the press. She loves the outings most of all, loves the attention, the flashing lights of the cameras, the microphones in her face, the passing glances from handsome men that speak of wanting more. She is perfect, golden, lovely. She and Jaime make the best jaeger team. Sure, there’s Robert and Ned Stark, who are oh-so beloved by everyone with their honor and glory. Oberyn Martell and Willas Tyrell are a strange pair, but they’re very popular overseas, admired by people from across the globe in nations she didn’t even know existed. She hears little of Stannis Baratheon, her brother-in-law, and Davos Seaworth, if only because they’re stationed in the middle of nowhere, but the people that love them do so passionately.

But none of them get the attention that she and her twin receive. They’re above everyone else. This program was destined for them and they were destined for jaegers. Everyone knew that. They were children of jaeger program as much as they were children of Tywin. And people love and revere them for it. Oh, she loves it all, almost more than what it feels like to be in a jaeger.

It is because of this that a routine drop simulation, something they have done thousands of times, ends up being a failure and they get their first loss in months.

Jaime storms out of the jaeger as soon as they are disengaged, ripping his helmet off and tearing through the hallways in the direction of his bedroom. Cersei stalks him from behind, feeling his fury rush over her like waves, so powerful that it keeps her at bay. She can’t get five feet from him without feeling like she’s being forcibly pushed away from him, but she throws his name into the air from her mind, willing him to catch it and turn around. Nothing works though. Even people that have never drifted with him step away from him as he rushes past them.

“What was that all about–?” Petyr Baelish, the J-Tech Chief, can barely finish his sentence before Jaime shoves him out of his way, knocking the younger man into a wall, and continues walking. When Cersei is close enough, Petyr arches an eyebrow and rubs his arm. “What’s that all about?”

“None of your goddamn business,” Cersei snarls, shooting him a glare to tell him just where she thinks he belongs.

Petyr holds his hands in the air in deference. “Sorry I asked. What happens in the drift stays between drifters.”

Cersei ignores him and hastens her pace. A part of her wants to run to catch up with her brother, but her pride won’t allow it. She won’t run to him; she will never do that. If he thinks he can force her to degrade herself like that, then he better think again. He takes the stairs to his room in one giant step and disappears from her sight. Right when she reaches the door, only “Jaime” out of her mouth, he slams the metal frame into her face.

She can feel his anger from behind the metal door, but she knows sure as hell that he can feel hers as well.

“Jaime,” she says again in a barely controlled voice, “open the door.”

Nothing.

She hears silence but feels rage swelling up inside her, to the point where she feels like she’s choking on it. She hasn’t felt this much hate and anger rolling over from him to her since the day of her wedding to Robert.

“If you don’t open this door right now–”

“You’ll what?” Jaime rips the door open then. He’s half out of his jaeger uniform. They’re not supposed to take these to their personal quarters and she’s sure the Marshall will rip them a new one for this. She’s defied him a few times, but Jaime… He’s only defied their father once and he’s never stepped a toe out of line since. “What are you going to do, Cersei? Are you going to fuck Lancel again? Maybe Kettleback?”

Cersei takes a step back from her twin for the first time in their lives. “What did you just say?”

When Jaime speaks again, it’s like there is a period and a punch after every word: “Are you going to fuck Lancel again?”

“Oh, so you’re going to listen to the rumors Tyrion likes to spread around now?” Cersei scoffs and places her hands on her hips. “Sometimes, even I think you’re as thick as the press makes you out–”

“Tyrion didn’t have to tell me a goddamn thing, Cersei!” Jaime shouts, uncaring that there are people walking around behind them and listening in on their conversation. Tywin will have their heads for this if he finds out that his golden team are fighting, even more so if he knows what they’re fighting about. Cersei moves to shove him inside of his room so that they can make the conversation more private, but he slaps her hand away like a wounded child. He even looks wounded, his face contorted into something that looks remarkably like pain, as if she physically hurt him. “I saw it. I fucking _saw it_ in the Drift. You can’t hide shit like that forever, not when we share a head. There’s no such thing as secrets for us.”

This time Cersei has nothing to say. She just looks back at him, no words coming to her mind, nothing to placate him.

“I think it’s time you find yourself another fucking co-pilot,” Jaime grounds out before he slams the door in Cersei’s face and leaves her stunned and alone for the first time since she was born.

*

He’s losing it. He’s losing this fight. He’s losing his head.

Gods they’re _losing_.

Ned tries not to think about it as they take another swing at the kaiju, but the beast is the biggest one they’ve ever encountered and they’re alone in this. Robert is on his left, shouting and hollering, just as he always is. He’s grown a beard out, which he shouldn’t have done. Ned once joked that Robert wouldn’t be able to see out of his helmet if Robert grew a beard, but now he’s not so certain the joke was wrong.

“Plasma cannon, Ned! We’ve got this!”

Ned struggles to lift his arm. Truth is, the kaiju tore into the left arm of _Winter Fury_ and it’s badly damaged, to the point where it takes every bit of effort for him to lift his arm. It’s just his arm – he wasn’t the one that got his arm damn near bitten off – but the moment the kaiju bit into the arm and crunched down as hard as it could before they could shake it off, the electric shocks that ran through Ned’s body nearly paralyzed him with pain.

“Ned!”

“I’m giving it my best!” Ned screams back in frustration.

_The Drift is silent._

But instead of being silent and in each other’s heads, fighting this battle and knowing what the other one planned on doing before it happened, Ned has felt disconnected for nearly half the fight. Something went wrong with the jaeger. It had to have been damaged somehow. All he and Robert have been doing for almost the entire fight is shouting at each other and at the kaiju. He can still hear Robert’s thoughts bouncing around in his head, but they’re all aggression and rage and discombobulated. It’s disorienting, especially when they get thrown into the ground and dragged around for a bit before getting back to their feet.

Finally, the plasma cannon is hot enough and ready to go. They both scream in unison as they shove the jaeger’s fist into the kaiju’s gut and blow it to smithereens, as hard as they can. Ned screams until his voice is raw. He’s too goddamn old for this, he can’t help but think, but he’s desperate for this war to end. Robb finished his training at the Academy and had his own jaeger now. He’d even had his first fight with a kaiju and came out victorious. _Young Wolf_ , they call his jaeger that he pilots alongside his best friend Theon Greyjoy. He will not be the last though.  Arya will be next, determined as ever despite his and Catelyn’s pleas for her to stay out, and Rickon is old enough to want in. But gods, if Ned could just finish this war before any of that happens. They have to keep fighting. They have to win. This should be his war, not his children’s war as well.

The kaiju collapses to the ground and they swagger back, their jaeger barely able to stand on its own. It will take weeks to fix this bloody machine. Ned’s entire body aches, his muscles throbbing and his mind tingling. He can feel Robert’s glee and pride at having won nudging at him, but all Ned is able to feel is exhausted.

“Good to go, gents,” comes the voice of J-Tech Chief Petyr Baelish. “Time to let the clean-up crew do its job.”

“C’mon, Ned, let’s head back for a drink, shall we? I know plenty of girls willing to service heroes like us.”

Those are the last words that come out of Robert Baratheon’s mouth before the kaiju grabs them from behind and digs its claws into Winter Fury’s head. There are more words bouncing around in Robert’s mind and being launched at Ned. He reciprocates them. Swears, grunts, messy shouts.

“It wasn’t dead yet!” Ned screams, stating the obvious after the fact. He’s just so angry at himself. How could they have messed that up? They should have known that it wasn’t dead. They should have fucking known. How had Baelish missed that? The guy’s a fucking weasel, but he knows his shit. He should have fucking known.

The kaiju has a hold of their head so tightly that it’s able to pull them off their feet and backwards onto the ground. They slam down so hard that Ned is nearly torn out of his spot and thrown about the cabin. Before they can get a handle on the things arms with the jaeger’s hands, the claws dig deep into the head and appear in Ned’s vision. A breach – there’s a breach. The claws are huge and only the first half are inside. It’s weird, but he’s never really thought about the size of the kaiju. When he’s in a jaeger, he’s as big as they are – as tall and powerful and dangerous. He’s their size. But now that its claws are just five feet away from him, Ned understands just how small and pathetic he really is compared to these monstrosities.

 _Catelyn forgive me,_ Ned thinks, wishing that he could send the words to her somehow, but only Robert is getting them and his best friend isn’t even paying attention to him anymore. _The kids–_

There’s no time to finish the thought – not when the kaiju rips the head right off of _Winter Fury_ and throws it back into the ocean.

*

Arianne is so close to the television screen that her nose is nearly pressed against the screen. Her hands are pressed flat against it, despite knowing that it will leave handprints on the screen, but she doesn’t care. It’s as close to the action as she is allowed to get. It’s as close as she can be to her uncle while he is fighting against a kaiju.

She never blinks when she watches these things – a part of her thinks that she doesn’t even breathe – and it takes half the household to pry her away from the television. Her father will walk into the room, sighing deeply and rubbing his temples, and tell her to leave it be. _“You cannot will the kaiju into dying,”_ he tells her every single time. _“You must go on with your life.”_ But she doesn’t care. She hasn’t cared, not in the slightest, not since she was born in a world filled with jaegers and kaiju. This war is a part of her life. She thinks of the aunt she never met, Aunt Elia, the one that her Uncle Oberyn told her stories about. She thinks of the kaiju and their monstrous claws. She thinks of her uncle laughing and pictures him piloting his jaeger, _Red Viper_ , with his co-pilot, Willas Tyrell.

How can she possibly leave it when this is a part of her life just as much as breathing is?

She is in her twenties now and fresh out of university, ready to take over the family business the moment her father decides to resign. He’s been sick for years, the leg injury he sustained during the kaiju attack that killed his sister having never properly healed either, but he’s stubborn and refuses to let go or give up. That is how she knows that she cannot give this up either. It’s in their blood to hold onto things, to never let go, to fight until there is nothing left of them.

(That is how she has always known deep down that her uncle Oberyn will die fighting a kaiju.)

The world doesn’t stop for a kaiju attack anymore. Classes aren’t canceled. Work isn’t halted. She remembered getting a text from her cousin Sarella about Oberyn being deployed to a kaiju attack while she was stuck in class. All she had wanted to do was rush to the nearest television and watch any sort of live feed she could find on the battle, but she hadn’t been able to get out of class because she was in the middle of taking a final. No one else in the room seemed to even know or care about what was going on. Arianne wanted to scream – she wanted to stand up on her desk and shout at all of them for being so careless and ignorant. Couldn’t they see that they were in a war that seemed to have no end in sight? Couldn’t they see that they had to do something – that they had to fucking care?

It’s enough to drive a girl mad, even a girl as clever as her.

Strange as it is, it feels like a relief when there is an attack when she has a chance to do nothing but watch the television and an even greater relief when there is a chance for news coverage. She knows that it’s better when they fight the kaiju in the water and as far from land as possible, but then she feels like she’s in the dark and doesn’t know what’s going on. She has to watch every punch and shot and kick that Red Viper gives because it lets her know that her uncle is still alive and fighting.

And so she sits on her legs like a child and watches the battle unfold between _Red Viper_ and a kaiju codenamed Mountain. Her other cousin Tyenne sits on the couch behind her, silent throughout the whole affair. It’s her father in that jaeger, her father fighting for the lives of all those people in the distant city. They never talk about it, but Arianne knows how much Tyenne wants to be with him. Instead it is her sisters Obara and Nymeria that together pilot a jaeger called _Sand Snake_ , taking after their father, while Tyenne stays behind and attends university. She never moves, never blinks, never looks away, and most certainly never looks scared or upset. She remains passive the entire time, her emotions hidden from her closest confidant and friend.

 _It must cut her to watch her father and sisters fight though,_ Arianne thinks not for the first time as _Red Viper_ ’s fist collides with the kaiju’s face.

But Oberyn will defeat the kaiju, just as he has done every single kaiju he’s fought as far as Arianne can remember. She may not be a child anymore, but she is still enraptured in the beauty and horror that is a fight between two huge monsters. She’s a grown woman, but whenever a kaiju appears on the screen and a jaeger shows up to save the day, she’s reminded of just how young and small she is. Things have been different too ever since _Winter Fury_ was destroyed.

Anyone can fall. It’s easier than they thought it was.

But not Oberyn, never Oberyn.

Arianne knows that the Tyrell family does not trust their son’s co-pilot, but Oberyn trusts him with everything and Arianne does as well. As a child, when Oberyn first brought Willas Tyrell over for dinner to meet everyone, she was rather unsure as well. This was her beloved uncle’s co-pilot? He was a cripple. But then they molded together in the strangest of ways. She saw them blend together over dinner in a remarkable fashion. Arianne could not help but be mesmerized by the way that Willas knew exactly what Oberyn wanted passed to him next or how Oberyn could practically finish Willas’ statements. They would look at each other and just see things and know things that no one else at the table could be privy to. Even more fantastical was the way that Oberyn’s long-time girlfriend, Elaria, never once complained and seemed to love Willas almost as much as she loved Oberyn.

They are the perfect unit – two opposite sides of a coin that work together – and they will remain one of the best, the greatest, the shining star.

(But stars fall. They fall all the time.)

When the kaiju slams _Red Viper_ into the ground on its back, Arianna pulls her hands back from the screen and clenches her fist. _Get up,_ she thinks as hard as she can, trying to send her thoughts to her uncle. _Get up, get up, get up!_

Instead, the kaiju stomps into the jaeger and sparks are flying. There’s a fire too. Arianne realizes too late that something in the jaeger and it’s not responding properly to the rangers inside. The kaiju just keeps stomping on the machine until finally it picks the jaeger up and begins to squeeze it, almost like the monster is trying to hug the machine.

“Fight!” Arianne yells at the screen. She has never felt so helpless in her life. A part of her wants to look back to see how Tyenne is doing, to crawl into the couch and hold onto the other girl, but she can’t look away. “Father!” She pulls herself to her feet and gawks at the screen, watching as Mountain crushes _Red Viper_ right before her eyes. And when the monster lets out a chilling roar and throws the jaeger to the side like a rag doll and it doesn’t _get up get up get up_ –

Arianne lets out a howl of her own and shoves the television off of the stand.

*

 _Storm’s End_ , that’s what they call their jaeger. It was Renly that came up with the name. It was Loras that convinced Renly to join the Jaeger Academy in the first place.

 _“Being a ranger is in your blood,”_ Loras told him all those years ago, and it was and it is. Renly Baratheon was born to be a ranger, just as much as his brother Robert had been. Stannis is a good enough ranger, but Loras knows well enough that the PPDC placed Stannis Baratheon and Davos Seaworth in a place that was almost as empty as it was desolate for a reason.

Renly, on the other hand, has all the makings of a fantastic ranger. His score on the drops and kills is enough to prove that.

The easy, confident smile that Renly tosses his way when they’re in Storm’s End reassures Loras completely. “Let’s finish this, shall we?” Renly has always been a confident person. Even when they were young and played with each other and watched the fights between the jaegers and kaiju on the screen, he has never been unsure of himself or his family. When Winter Fury was taken down and Robert died with it, Renly handled his brother’s death with such grace that Loras had almost been scared.

And to be honest, if it wasn’t for Renly, Loras was almost certain that he would have lost his mind after Willas’ death. Red Viper’s defeat had dealt a deafening blow to the Tyrell family. Garlan took over everything, taking care of their parents, grandmother, and sister. Margaery… She refused calls from anyone for almost a week. When Loras finally was able to see her, she looked almost like a wilted rose. She took his death the worse, furious and beautiful and devastated to the point where she had been cold to the touch.

 _“I should take his place in a jaeger,”_ Margaery whispered, curled up on her couch under a blanket while holding onto a mug of hot chocolate. Neither one of them said it, but Loras knew why she was drinking hot chocolate in the middle of summer. It was Willas’ favorite drink; he would make it for them whenever the first snowfall came. _“I feel like I’m doing nothing, sitting behind a desk with books and pictures and numbers. So I can make a prediction about when the next attack is going to happen, so what? Did that help Willas?”_

Loras hadn’t known what to say to her then and he still doesn’t now, not as he and Renly trudge towards where the kaiju should be.

“Don’t worry,” Renly says suddenly. “Margaery isn’t angry at you for being a ranger. She’s very proud.”

Of course Renly would be able to tell what Loras was thinking about. He always can. Regardless of whether or not they’re connected in the Drift, Renly almost always seems to know what is on Loras’ mind. The night after Willas’ death… Loras had just lain there, curled up tightly against Renly’s body, listening to the deafening sound of his beating heart, reminding him that they were both still alive. Renly hadn’t moved for hours; he just sat there and combed his fingers through Loras’ hair while reading a book. Jaeger pilots have difficulty disconnecting with each other after a Drift session – it’s like they’re plastered together and they’re all mixed up mind and body – and it’s just reassuring to wrap up so closely with someone that it’s hard to tell where one person begins and the other ends.

Loras wants that right now more than anything. He loves having their minds mixed up with each other’s, but he likes having both at the same time, when they’re together in bed or sleeping and dreaming the same dream or watching a movie and laughing at the same exact time or how both of them feel the urge to call up Margaery to tell her that they should go out for coffee.

 _After,_ a thought occurs in his head, _we’ll go after._

(It’s not his thought; and he likes it that way.)

“You’re right on top of it,” their J-Tech Chief Randyll Tarly tells them over the headset.

“I don’t see anything,” Renly replies. Moving in sync, they turn around, looking everywhere. He flips a few switches to get more light out, high beams shooting out of the eyes of their jaeger and lighting up the water like a lighthouse. Still nothing.

Loras frowns. He doesn’t like this. Something doesn’t feel right. “Are you certain that we’re the right spot?”

“That’s what the readings say,” Tarly snaps, sounding aggravated at being questioned. He’s never been wrong before, not once. While Petyr Baelish has always been the preferred J-Tech Chief and is a favorite of the Marshall’s, Loras has never once believed Tarly to be anything less than stellar. “You’re literally standing right in front of it.”

Renly smirks. “Maybe this little kaiju is too shy to–”

A claw shoves its way through the conn-podd, metal screaming and sparks flying, and propelling them forward and face first into the water.

Loras doesn’t need to look over to see what’s going on. There’s a scream ripping through his mind, making him feel like he’s being torn apart, and he struggles to push back as water seeps into the podd. Soon enough, the scream in his head is out loud and he’s screaming. Flailing. Trying to fight and move but the jaeger isn’t responding like it should be. Only half of it is responding, the right side, and he kicks and pushes back.

And then, as the claw pulls itself out of _Storm’s End_ , despite the rushing water and loud beeps and warnings blaring, there is silence. Loras hears nothing in his head at all. Just loud, painful, complete silence. Not even his own thoughts are coming to him.

When he looks over, he sees Renly hanging limp in his suit, a gaping hole in his head and blood pouring out.

They will say that Loras Tyrell did something fantastic that night – that he was utterly brilliant. They will regard him as a hero, as a man that stood alone after his co-pilot fell, a man that held his ground and fought the best fight of his life all on his own. When they send the divers down to pull him from Storm’s End, his skin will be burned from the acid that the kaiju spit at him and him alone. They will regard him with wonder. They will regard him with awe. Some might even feel slightly afraid of him. After all, no one has been able to pilot a jaeger on their own since Tywin Lannister.

No one will say that he is broken, but Loras feels it, feels as broken as _Storm’s End_. He lost a part of himself that night, as he raged and shrieked and forced himself to fight until he was bleeding from his eyes and nose. No one talks about how he went berserk afterward, how he stabbed and punched and kicked the kaiju until it was in little pieces and there was kaiju blue blood everywhere.

Tarly talks about repairing _Storm’s End_ , maybe finding Loras a new co-pilot, but Loras knows it’s bullshit. He never wants to pilot a jaeger again. He just wants to sink and sink into that ocean where Renly’s body floated away and never come back again. But he can’t. Margaery won’t let him. She’s lost one brother; she won’t lose another.

*

It takes him far too long to catch the problem, so long that it’s almost humiliating to bring it up. He should’ve seen the symptoms earlier, should have caught it right in the beginning. After all, he went to medical school. He should have seen it. He’s studied the jaegers enough to know that there were a million and one problems with the Mark-I’s that they just couldn’t give two shits about before sending rangers off to battle.

Instead, Tyrion is just staring at his father blankly when he asks, “Just how sick are you?”

Tywin settles his youngest son with a glare before turning away from him, wiping the blood from his nose so discreetly that most people wouldn’t even think anything of it. He’s good at this – very good at hiding this – but not quite good enough to hide it from his own kin, no matter how much he hates admitting that Tyrion is his son.

Knowing that his father won’t answer him directly, Tyrion decides to go for a different approach. “When did the symptoms start?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the Marshall responds, his back to him still. The man is sick as all get out; and he’s still a stubborn bastard, until the end of course.

“Of course it matters,” Tyrion says coolly. “I’d like to know how much longer you have before you punch the ticket, in case we need to find someone to promote to Marshall to fill in your shoes.”

“This war will end before I die!” Tywin snaps, whipping around and slapping his desk as hard as possible. If he was the type of man that liked to be sentimental, picture frames and knickknacks would have toppled over; instead, the computer monitor on his desk wobbles a bit and a pen slowly rolls to the other side and that’s it. “The ending is coming. I can feel it.”

 _Are you sure that’s the end of the war or the end of your life?_ Tyrion can’t help but think. It’s best that he keeps that thought to himself though. Tywin would physically throw him out had he let that slip.

“Have you been to see any doctors, any specialists?”

“Of course,” Tywin says as he sits down. “But severe and prolonged exposure to radiation isn’t something you can cure with a simple pill or shot.”

Tyrion rubs his hands together. “Do Jaime and Cersei no?”

“They don’t need to know. It will only serve to distract them during missions.”

This time, Tyrion could not hide his shock. “They are your _children_. They deserve to know.”

“No one needs to know of this,” Tywin bites back. Tyrion should have known that’s what he would say. To the people of the world, Tywin Lannister is more than a man, maybe even more than a god. He is a constant, the only constant all rangers and everyone in the PPDC had in common. If people knew that the Marshall was terminally ill, there would a crack in the PPDC’s armor. Who knew what kind of chaos that would bring? “And if you tell anyone, I will have you banned from every Shatterdome in the universe.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Tyrion promises. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

As he leaves the Marshall’s office, Tyrion is almost certain that he hears Tywin mutter, “We all hope that,” but maybe he’s just hearing things.

 


	4. New Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new generation has stepped up to the plate to take over the fight against the kaiju and change is in the air.

The years after Ned’s death were long and hard, but Catelyn bore them with a kind of silent strength thought only capable of jaeger pilots. While Robb waged war against the creatures that took his father away and Arya disappeared into the Jaeger Academy the second she turned fifteen, while Sansa graduated top of her class with a political science degree from NYU and Bran dug himself into his studies about jaeger tech science, while Rickon became wild and disruptive in school, Catelyn took all their pain and sorrow and absorbed it as best as she could. How anyone could continue on after their soulmate’s death had been beyond her until it had actually happened.

Ned died.

She mourned.

But more importantly, she lived.

When Catelyn visits the Shatterdome in San Diego where Arya is about to graduate and Robb is stationed, it’s the first time that she witnesses firsthand what goes on when a kaiju appears. She doesn’t panic, despite being what everyone here would call a “simple civilian”. Instead she hurries to where her children are. She knows that they hate being babied and not all of them are children anymore, but she can’t help herself.

“Is Robb going to be deployed?” Rickon asks as they weave their way through a flood of mechanics and techs.

Catelyn glances at her youngest, but is unable to say anything, her throat closed up. _No,_ she tells herself, _they’ll someone more experienced, older, wiser. They won’t send a jaeger team that has only fought two kaiju up against a Category V._

(Ah, but she knows better though. Jaegers have been dropping like flies in these past few years, what with the kaiju evolving, according to Bran and all the research articles he’s been burning through. The kaiju are growing larger while humanity is only growing desperate.)

Somehow, miracle upon miracles, they find Robb just as he’s finished suiting up.

“Mother–”

He’s in his mid-twenties, still so young and fresh, his red hair curly and sitting in his eyes. He needs a haircut, lest it gets in his soft blue eyes in his helmet. Sometimes, she forgets that he has a pregnant wife shuttering around here, a gentle girl named Jeyne that has only ever been sweet. But Robb will forever be a child in her mind.

“Just come back home,” Catelyn says, no pleads.

The look in her eyes is too much for him and he turns away. As he walks down the hall to meet up with Theon, his co-pilot, Rickon shouts after him, “Kick some kaiju ass!”

Robb affords his little brother a grin and Theon gives a thumbs up. Catelyn is too busy thinking about Ned drowning in his own blood to consider reprimanding Rickon for his language. Once Robb vanished from their sight, the two of them make their way to a bridge where they can watch _Young Wolf_ come to life and then disembark on their battle, where they were fighting alongside another team, Patrek Mallister and Dacey Mormont.

Just as the jaeger begins to head into the bay, Arya rushes up behind them, sweating and out of breath. “I missed him!” she wails out in despair.

Rickon rolls his eyes, all child-like arrogance and surety. “It’s not like you won’t see him when he gets back.”

Catelyn almost misses it – but she catches the strange and distant look in Arya’s eyes as she looked at her youngest brother. It was the look of someone that has been studying, the look of someone that has finally begun to understand that this war takes no prisoners, only lives. Before Catelyn can say anything though, the look fades away and her youngest daughter’s face is a blank canvas. Arya is the best out of all her children at that. Sansa can hide what she’s feeling, but the moment someone she loves is concerned, she is all emotion. Robb has always worn his heart on his sleeve and has never been afraid of showing it. Bran is so completely unashamed of explaining how he feels that Catelyn sometimes feels he’s more emotionally mature than she is. And Rickon is all wildfire.

Arya, however, is able to put on another face at the drop of the hat. Sometimes she slips, as she just did, but then she’ll blink and be someone wholly different. There are moments when Catelyn fears that she cannot recognize her young daughter. It’s like she’s looking at another girl, not her Arya – but then she’ll bit her bottom lip and return back to the Arya that Catelyn has tried to protect from herself all her life.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Arya says, a placating smile appearing on her face. It’s not a smile meant for Rickon. It’s a smile meant for Catelyn, meant to make her mother worry less. (It doesn’t work anymore.) “I wanted to ask him for help with some new fighting techniques Syrio taught me in the Kwoon today. I’ll just do it after he and Theon knock this kaiju back to the hell it crawled out of.”

Her voice speaks of confidence. Her two children go hand in hand to watch the feed of the fight, Catelyn trailing behind them. There’s a rat chewing in her stomach, only serving to call a wave of nausea to roll over her. It’s still there, gnawing away at any self-assurance she might have left in her, by the time she reaches the tech room. Their new J-Tech Chief, Roose Bolton, stands at attention watching the screens, his calm demeanor making her feel colder instead of relaxed. Her entire mind feels unsettled, like she knows that there’s something wrong but she just can’t figure out what.

“Prepare to engage in combat, _Wolf_ ,” Roose intones, almost sounding bored with the whole thing.

The incredible urge to smack the man comes over Catelyn, but she clasps her shaking hands in front of her instead.

“Category V, my ass!” Theon barks out with a laugh once the kaiju breaches the water. She can almost picture the easy grin on his face, the one he almost always wears whenever he catches sight of a pretty girl. But she can’t though because the huge massive kaiju on the screen is all she can see, each step rumbling like thunder and creating monster waves.

It’s difficult not to watch the fight through the slits of her fingers, but she keeps her hands tightly clasped and her eyes glued on the screen. She barely registers Rickon’s hollering and cheers, Roose’s commands and visual information, Arya’s stone cold silence and intense face, or even the sounds coming over the speakers from the two jaegers going head-to-head against the largest kaiju she’s ever seen. There are no sounds. Only sights. Sparks, bright blue acid, fire, steam, metal, armored skin, swords, and knives – kaiju and jaeger melding into one as they clash against each other.

“Wait–” Roose furrows his brow, looking more human than robot for the first time, and begins to fidget with the computer at his left. Catelyn wants to scream at him, remind him just who and what he needs to be paying attention to, when he jumps forward and grabs the mic, even though it won’t help the jaeger pilots hear him any better. “There’s a second signal from behi–“

Before anyone can do or say anything, a kaiju bursts out of the water headfirst, its head looking more like a knife than anything else, and it roars ferociously as it digs its knife head deep into _Young Wolf_ ’s torso, piercing through it completely.

Everyone goes silent in the room, Rickon dropping his arms so fast, Arya turning pale white, Roose nearly breaking the mic – all except for Catelyn.

She screams and screams until her throat is raw and there is nothing left of her.

*

Sansa is the picture of pleasantness. She is the great soother, the bringer of soft smiles, the speaker of matters. While her younger sister dreamed of fighting against the kaiju in a jaeger, Sansa always knew that there was another battleground meant for her, and that is in government buildings. For the little that they know about the kaiju, they are simple creatures with one goal. People, especially politicians that had no real or even a hint of understanding about what it was like to go up against a monster from another dimension in a giant robot or lose their loved ones in those fights, were a completely different matter altogether.

“The Pacific Wall is a ridiculous program from start to finish,” Sansa says with clarity, not a drop of forgiveness in her tone. Normally she is gentle, able to placate and sway the most ardent of those that oppose her into agreeing with her, but today she feels like she’s on the breaking point. She sits calmly at her table while gazing at a group of people from around the world that will decide their planet’s future, looking them directly in the face, doing her best to look demure, but she can’t stop herself from twirling her pen nervously between her fingers.

“Ridiculous?” a man of unimport (at least to her) exclaims. “There have been many promising reports–”

“The plans for the Wall were made years ago when Category IV’s were just starting to crawl out from the Breach, not taking Category V’s and soon-to-be Category VI’s into consideration,” Sansa interrupts. All of the politicians glance at one another, all of them very unused to being interrupted, especially by her. Even before graduating, she had wormed her way into many of these councils. She was knowledgeable, genial, and most importantly, politicians liked her. The Marshall decided to use her for that very reason. She might not agree with everything that Tywin Lannister did, but she respects him and knows he is right. The Jaeger Program took away her father and her older brother, her best friend’s older brother, and so many more. Her only sister was next in line to die. But she knows that it’s the right thing to stand by, not stand behind some stupid concrete wall. “The Wall will fall. What would you have citizens do then?”

“People are evacuating closer inland–”

“Do you mean the wealthy?” Sansa practically huffs in aggravation at them. These men and women are privileged and hiding in fear behind their privilege and holding onto their money is far more important to them than protecting lives. If the kaiju win and take over, their money won’t be worth so much anymore. “People like you, like me and my family, can afford to move inland, but that leaves the majority of the population out in the cold with nothing more than blankets to protect them. This plan will end billions of innocent lives, but in more ways than just killing them. The Wall is nothing but a cage. It won’t keep the kaiju out, but it will keep us in.”

“Miss Stark, you of all people should know the costs of the Jaeger Program,” a woman says. “Your sister is in the program. Are you willing to sacrifice her as well?”

Sansa pushes her chair away from the table and stands up straight, unable to keep her cheeks from flushing bright pink. “If my sister is willing to sacrifice her life in order to protect your ineffectual minds and selfish lifestyles, then that’s her decision to make, not mine.”

*

_A two pilot system._

The phrase bounces around in Arya’s head, has been for years, for what feels like her whole life. Jaegers have been an integral part of her world since she was born. Becoming a pilot, a fighter, has been her dream. It is what she was born to do. She knows that in her bones. Whenever she was around _Winter Fury_ as a child, she’d press her hand against the cool metal and she swore that she could feel its soul humming against her. She’s a jaeger pilot without a jaeger.

And without a co-pilot, it seems.

“Dad tried to warn me about this,” Arya groaned into her pillow the night before.

Sansa was there to visit, sitting at her bedside and smoothing Arya’s messy brown hair just as she’d done when Arya was really little and had a bad dream about huge monsters and Daddy dying. Another meeting with the Political Powers that Be had gone awry. She didn’t say anything, of course, but Arya could tell. She’d thought that maybe she and Sansa might be drift compatible, but Sansa just smiled and shook her head when Arya suggested it. _“I’m fighting a different kind a war,”_ she sighed, _“a much more annoying one.”_

Though her big sister said nothing, Arya didn’t really need her to. She was done with the Academy, but left stranded in water without a co-pilot. Only two people had piloted a jaeger alone (the Marshall and Loras Tyrell – she’d read the reports thousands of times) and it ended badly for both of them. Neither were able to pilot a jaeger again. Arya is stubborn and independent and very much a loner – she doesn’t need help from anyone and she steadfastly refuses anything of the sort – but this is something she can’t do on her own. Her father had his best friend, Robert Baratheon; Robb had his best friend, Theon Greyjoy. And who does Arya Stark have? No one.

In the Kwoon Combat Room the next day, Arya practices in silence, on her own, as she has always done, even before she was in the Academy. She has the moves of masters like Jaime Lannister and the late Oberyn Martell imprinted in her memory. _Cut fiercely like a lion,_ she thinks, _move quick like a snake._

(Bite down and _kill kill kill_ like a wolf.)

Arya swings the hanbo around – and nearly falls back when the stick clatters against another.

Looking up sharply and breathing heavily, Arya finds herself standing in front of a much taller boy. He hasn’t been around long, having come from an Academy much further south, but he’s fixed to graduate. Shaggy black hair, bright blue eyes, muscular build, probably more than a foot on her, and either wearing some stupid grin or stubborn scowl. Most notably, he was something of a lone wolf, like her.

 _His name is Gendry Waters,_ she remembers suddenly.

“Can’t be getting much practice fighting with air,” Gendry says.

A flame of indignation rises in her belly. “Air probably puts up a better fight than you.”

The stupid grin appears on his face and she feels the urge to swipe it off with her hanbo. “Wanna bet?”

“Bet what?” Arya has plenty of money that she’s saved over the years, but while she doesn’t know this older boy very well, she does know that he doesn’t come from money. He got here by the scrape of his neck, plucked out of some town for a talent he wasn’t aware of having – a talent for fighting.

He shrugs his shoulders. “Dunno. Bragging rights?”

“Bragging is for losers.”

“Oh, you’re probably right,” he sighs melodramatically. “What would be the point if I’m just bragging about beating a little lady anyways?”

Arya swings at him blindly. “I’m not a lady!”

But he just laughs – he _laughs_ – and swats her wild attack away with his own hanbo. His laughter bounces in her mind now, and she switches tactics almost instantly. Her brain never goes into autopilot like she sees some jaeger pilot wannabes do. You can never go into autopilot. You have to always be in the moment – always in jaeger pilot mode, as Bran calls it. When she attacks, it’s with precision, a tranquility she wasn’t thought capable of. When she fights, it’s almost like she’s _dancing_.

Indeed, to anyone watching, the two of them dance around the room and each other, their hanbos clicking and clacking against one another rhythmically. It’s like she knows his steps before he makes them, but he knows hers as well. The moment he has the upper-hand on her, she slides out of the way and then she has the upper-hand. All of it both frustrates her and exhilarates her as she fends off an attack and then goes to strike him. It’s a dance to a song that has played in her heart more times than she can remember. His almost mocking laugh keeps ricocheting off the walls, but soon it is mixed with the sound of her own triumphant laugh when she actually smacks him in the ass.

“Not so cocky now, are you, you bull-headed boy?” she taunts.

Gendry doesn’t say anything. Instead, he uses her arrogance to his advantage and he somehow manages to swipe her off her feet and pin her down against the floor. The smug look on his face is almost too infuriating. “Maybe I was going easy on you.”

Completely ignoring the stick in her hands, she sweeps feet around and hooks one around his ankle, catching him unaware and jerking him hard, causing him to come tumbling down too. Arya is on him in a second, practically sitting on his chest and pressing her hanbo down against him. “If that was you not going easy, then you better go back to the Academy while you can,” she says, her lips curling up into a smirk. “ _I win_.”

For a second, neither of them say anything, just sort of…sit there, staring at each other, both gasping for breath and sweating, red in the face. This is the hardest she’s fought in a while; and though she won’t say it out loud, fighting him was a lot better than fighting on her own. It felt…it felt good, electric, _right_.

There is a very strange look in his eyes, one that catches her off guard and makes her not want to breathe – or maybe it makes her incapable of breathing. It’s nothing like she’s ever seen or felt before. Her heart races manically in her chest, her grip on the hanbo tightening so that they don’t start shaking, and she just–

A very strangled-sounding, “Arya…?” comes out of Gendry’s mouth, and that’s enough to startle her into action.

She jumps up off him and throws the stick to the side of the room like it’s been contaminated. With what, she doesn’t know – just…just something. As he clambers to his feet, she frantically looks everywhere but him, trying to remember words, the English language, anything but what is swirling inside of her body right now, but nothing comes up. When she looks at him, there’s that electric feeling again; and she swears that there’s a crackle of static in the air. Gods, she was losing it. Not sleeping properly in a week was going to her head.

“I’ve got to go,” Arya finally musters, turning on her heels and starting to run.

“Wait, Arya!” Gendry shouts after her. “Shit, wait! Just – would you just stop?”

Arya does stop, though why, she couldn’t really say. She doesn’t turn around though. She can’t. But she knows that he hasn’t moved – that he’s just standing there, wearing a confused look, his brow furrowed in a way that says he’s thinking of something really difficult and can’t figure it out. She knows that he’s breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling in rhythm with hers. She knows that he’s brimming with the same energy as her. “You felt it too, right?” is all he asks.

Anyone could train to be a jaeger pilot – but not everyone is drift compatible with someone.

 _“Drift compatibility is a rare ability to find it another person,”_ her father told her one time when she was a very little girl. _“You’ll know if they are.”_

“Arya, I know, it’s kind of crazy, but – well, I think – we’re–”

“Drift compatible,” she finishes, turning around to face him.

He grins slowly, unsurely, not so smugly.

She laughs clear as water.

(Bran is going to make so many jokes about this, she knows it; and Sansa will smile knowingly. Rickon will pepper her with an endless amount of questions and her mother will return to biting her nails. Robb would have loved Gendry. And for some reason, Arya can’t help but think that her father would be proud. Gendry kind of looks like Robert, after all, and they have a similar laugh too.)

*

“Math, math, math – you should listen to yourself sometimes. We’re talking about living creatures, not some abstract concept.”

“What you seem incapable of understanding is that math is alive – it’s in everything we do, see, breathe. Math is about as abstract as you.”

Tyrion’s mouth twists into an almost gruesome grin. “You must not know me very well yet. I’m about as abstract as they come.”

His new, much younger lab partner nods his head almost thoughtfully and turns his attention back to his laptop, their almost argument already shoved out of his mind. Ah, youth – so full of bright ideas that they believed no one else thought up before. Tyrion remembers it well. It’s why he can’t fault the young man for thinking this way. To his credit, he’s not entirely wrong either, though Tyrion would be the last one to admit it. The kid is extraordinarily bright and reminds Tyrion so much of himself at that age, so full of life, so full of wonder. They’ve both been through a hell of a lot too in order to get where they are, even if the Kaiju Science Department was depleted of nearly all its resources and funding these days.

After trying to get his head back into the piece of kaiju that he’s experimenting on, Tyrion stops again and can’t help but glance at his lab partner. To anyone that doesn’t know them that walks by this lab and glances inside, they’d look like a ridiculous sight – a dwarf and a crippled young man, barely passed being a kid. Bran Stark has a good head on his shoulders – great really. His legs might not work anymore, but his brain is more than fine.

Besides, kaiju didn’t care about any of that. They didn’t care if you were in a wheelchair or barely taller than a child or completely able-bodied. _We’re all just ants to be stepped on to them._

“I remember when I just started here; I wasn’t much older than you.” The words come out of his mouth without him really thinking about it. For the past few months, it’s just been him in this lab, everyone else having left when their pay was decreased and funding began to dwindle. Bran was different though. He’d jumped at the chance to join this Department, make a difference, do some science. He didn’t care about the shit pay. “I thought I could save the world with science.”

Bran smiles back at him, his eyes glinting behind his glasses. The smile makes him look remarkably young, definitely not like someone with a PhD under his belt, but then again, he graduated early for a reason. “Maybe you still can. There’s always hope.” This boy lost a father and a brother. His great uncle is dying of radiation poisoning from the Mark I generation (along with the Marshall). His mother is still in mourning. He had one sister off fighting in her own jaegaer now. And yet here he is, _smiling_.

It blows Tyrion’s mind a little when he thought nothing else could. “Give yourself a few years. That hope won’t feel so shiny.”

At this, the smile fades and Bran looks back at his computer screen. “If my calculations are correct, we won’t have a few years if something doesn’t change – if we don’t make a change.”

*

Cersei’s young voice from the past whispering in his ear, _“I’m the only one Jaime could be drift compatible with and you know it,”_ wakes Jaime up on a nearly nightly basis at this point. _Casterly Rock_ has been out of commission for a year since undergoing terrible damage after a kaiju fight gone wrong. Sometimes, he’ll flex his right hand and, if he doesn’t look down, he can almost pretend that it’s still there and he’s not just imagining things, and it’s not a fake hand there instead.

They saved the machine for the most part, but they couldn’t save all of him.

When it’s become apparent that sleep isn’t going to come to him, Jaime gets out of bed. It’s been two weeks since the last kaiju attack and his non-existent hand still aches and his mind burns. He’s been itching to get back into the pilot seat, though he knows that it’s impossible these days. His prosthetic isn’t so much of a problem, not since Willas Tyrell made it the standard that it shouldn’t be all those years ago, but his choice of drift partner on the other hand…

That was what had gone wrong a year ago. _“You’re out of calibration!”_ Baelish shouted at them, but that had been unnecessary. Jaime had fallen into the fucking RABIT like an amateur – except this time, instead of in training or during prep, it had been in the middle of fight with two kaiju.

(“Jaime! Jaime, come back to me! For fuck’s sake – my god – Jaime, please–”

 _Are you going to fuck Lancel again “Jaime can never know never know I can hide this from him even in the Drift” Are you going to fuck I can’t trust her how can I trust her I love her “He’s nothing I’m the real brains of the jaeger” time you find another fucking co-pilot “as thick as the press makes you out to be you’re as thick” another fucking co-pilot “I love you I love you I love you you are mine and I am yours mine yours no one else can have you but me” she is all I ARE YOU GOING TO FUCK LANCEL AGAIN_ )

Jaime blinks. The memory fades away. They warn you about the RABIT in training – “Don’t go chasing the RABIT!” – but to actually experience it is something else entirely. It takes over your whole world, mind, and body. By the time he’d come out of it, he was on the operating table and Casterly Rock was bleeding oil and he was bleeding blood and Cersei was howling and Tywin was silent as stone.

 _Who will love Tyrion if I’m gone?_ he remembers thinking blearily, not yet aware that he was missing a part of himself.

(His hand had been cut off his body, and Cersei had been cut out of his mind.)

Without realizing it, Jaime finds himself standing at the foot of _Casterly Rock_ , which is being worked on even this late at night. Mechanics have been working hard on and off to repair the jaeger in hopes of putting their star jaeger team back in action before they run out of funding at the commands of Tywin Lannister. Jaime doesn’t have the heart to tell his father that it’s pointless – that he’ll never pilot the jaeger again with Cersei – and knows that even if he did, his father wouldn’t stop.

“You miss her, don’t you?” a voice says from behind him.

When Jaime whirls around, he’s caught off guard by what greets him. What he heard was a soft female voice; what he sees is a tall woman in a mechanic uniform with broad shoulders and cropped blond hair. He doesn’t say anything at first, just eyes her with suspicion, unsure of what to make of her. He’s been mocked for his condition, his seeming impotence, the great Jaime Lannister hath fallen, all of that. It’s not a stretch for him to think that this is just another trap to tease him.

But the look on her face speaks of nothing except for genuineness. “Wish I could pilot one of them,” she sighs wistfully, gazing up at the jaeger with the type of admiration he’d once reserved only for Cersei. “They’re amazing creations. I’ve worked on them for years and know their ins and outs, but I’ve never actually been _in_ one.”

“Being in a jaeger is all I know,” Jaime says without thinking. “I don’t know what it’s like to be in the outside world.”

“Then why don’t you go back?” the woman asks.

Jaime doesn’t roll his eyes like Cersei would. Instead he waves his prosthetic hand around in the air. “Say hi to the mechanic, fake hand.”

Though she most certainly isn’t a beauty by any means, her face wide and speckled with freckles, when she blushes, it brings a sort of light to her face, especially her light blue eyes, that catches his attention. “Oh, I didn’t mean…” But words fail her and she looks down at the ground, clearly embarrassed. For a while, he was embarrassed too, but he was forced to live with it as well and evolve. _Just like the kaiju – gotta adapt._ “I used to dream about becoming a jaeger pilot.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Jaime asks. He knows that he should just leave, end this conversation, go back to his bunker, pretend to sleep, ignore Cersei all day, try to eat lunch with Tyrion, go to physical therapy, mental therapy, all that stupid daily stuff… But he can’t, he doesn’t want to, not yet at least. It’s been a long while since he’s just talked with someone and it feels like relieving pressure that has been building up inside his brain.

“I did – well, I tried.” Again, the mechanic girl looks embarrassed. She’s taller than he is, looks like she could toss him like a rag doll in the Kwoon, especially at this point in his life, but here she looks young, like a little girl. “I pretty much washed out. I couldn’t… I wasn’t…drift compatible with any of the other graduates.”

( _“I’m the only one Jaime could be drift compatible.”_ )

“Try again,” Jaime says suddenly. “Don’t just quit. Try again. That’s what a true jaeger pilot would do.”

At this, the woman looks at him, all challenging-like. “So says the guy who lost one fight a year ago and just quit after being the rockstar among all jaeger pilots?”

He doesn’t know what he’s saying and he certainly doesn’t know why he’s saying it, but for the first time in fucking years, the words coming out of his mouth feel like his own. “Maybe I’ll try again too. Maybe it’s time to go back.”

Time for revenge. Time for redemption.


End file.
